


The Way You Flirt is Shameful

by avid_author_activist



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Fluff, Summer Love, im projecting so hard onto alyss can you tell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24834268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avid_author_activist/pseuds/avid_author_activist
Summary: Cassandra and Alyss, desperately happy they've found one another. Two girls. Two stories. One love.
Relationships: Cassandra | Evanlyn/Alyss Mainwaring
Comments: 24
Kudos: 14
Collections: Ranger's Apprentice Summer Fluff 5K





	1. Green Tea and Espresso

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aleanmeanaquamarine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleanmeanaquamarine/gifts).



> For the AMAZING, WONDERFUL, BRILLIANT @elizathehumancarrot.  
> I believe I once said in one of these notes that you deserved the world and that I was sorry I couldn't give it to you. I hope you accept and enjoy this instead :)

Her mother always says that a coffee shop is a place of beginnings. There might be truth to that statement, but it definitely isn’t applicable to her own life, Cassandra thinks. Right now, a coffee shop is just a place she wants to go to get out of the cold. Snow stings her skin and turns to slush around her boots as she hurries down the sidewalk. She shivers, pulling her chevron scarf higher over her face to little avail. 

Google Maps says, “Turn around. Your destination is fifty meters to your right,” and Cass swears aloud. Even after four years in this city, she still gets lost all the time.

She finally finds the right door, and a bell tinkles cheerfully as she pushes it open. The cafe is named Fox in the Snow, and it has the new-age hipster vibe: exposed plumbing in the ceiling, dark hardwood accents, rough-edged napkins made from recycled paper. Cassandra unbuttons her coat with a grateful sigh. This is not her usual coffee shop—far from it, in fact—but she feels like trying something new. She’s too restless right now to settle for a latte from Starbucks.

Cass skims the menu and notes that the prices here aren’t much cheaper than Starbucks, but at least she’s supporting a local business. “Can I get… a green tea macchiato, please?” she asks. 

The cashier rings her up with a smile that Cass returns brightly. She loves little interactions like these—they have a mundane beauty that gives life its spark. She drops her change into the tip jar and heads for the nearest table.

Then out of the corner of her eye, she spots a hauntingly familiar head of curly hair. Her pulse jumps into triple time. Why the fuck is he here? 

It can’t be him, surely. Not two thousand miles—and half a lifetime—away from the last instance they’d seen each other. But then the boy turns his head, and any doubt Cassandra has is instantly dispelled. She’d recognize his sharp gaze anywhere, the determined set of his chin and mop of dark curls. 

It’s been four years since she’s last seen Will Treaty, and he still somehow looks exactly the same. 

She shrinks farther back into her seat, her mind whirling. In truth, Cassandra wouldn’t mind seeing Will on his own. It’s his fucking best friend Alyss that she’s worried about, because back in high school, they were nearly inseperable.

_ Alyss Mainwaring.  _ Cass’s first crush and first heartbreak. The memories of their relationship are the ones that haunt her when she lies awake at three in the morning. The ones that flicker through her brain when she’s waiting to catch the bus or toweling off after a shower. 

_ I don’t like you in that way, _ she remembers Alyss saying.  _ I don’t like  _ any _ girl in that way—I just… don’t.  _ Like she was trying to convince herself as much as Cassandra. Five years later, it still makes her heart twist. 

There’s a chance that Alyss isn’t actually here, right? That Will is in this city alone, and this is just a coincidental run-in?  _ Please, Jesus _ , Cass prays. Her life right now is confusing enough as it is. Midterms are in two weeks. She doesn’t need her middle school ex popping up like a zit before picture day. 

But fate is clearly not on her side today, because as the barista calls her order—a medium green tea macchiato—someone looks up. Cassandra whips in the other direction so that she doesn’t make eye contact, her heart pounding in her chest.

Because it’s  _ her _ , goddammit, it’s  _ Alyss _ . Even in the fringes of her peripheral vision, she sees enough. Black hair pulled into a messy French braid. Wire-rimmed glasses that she remembers Alyss only wears when she’s too lazy to put in contacts. Soft blue sweater that sets off her tan skin unfairly well. 

As Cass picks up the macchiato, it occurs to her that this used to be her go-to order when she was twelve years old. Could it be that Alyss somehow remembers—that she hasn’t moved on either– 

_ No,  _ she tells herself firmly, quashing the faint hope that rises in her chest. Alyss is the one that ended it, the one that wanted nothing to do with Cass afterwards. She wouldn’t even return a single text or call after Cassandra moved halfway across the country. Their relationship is a thing of the past. Cassandra has better things to do than pine after her former childhood best-friend-turned-girlfriend. 

_ If you want something _ , her father likes to say,  _ you either work for it or stop complaining about it. Choose to step away from a problem you cannot solve.  _

And Cass decided long ago to step away from Alyss Mainwaring.

She opens her laptop with perhaps more force than is necessary, takes a sip of her drink and tries not to yell out loud, but it’s fine. This is fine. Everything is fine. 

No, everything is  _ not  _ fine, her brain screams, at war with itself. Every atom in her body aches at knowing Alyss is so close—it’s like there’s a fucking inferno in the corner of the coffee shop, blistering, blazing, burning bright. Cassandra doesn’t know if she wants to run toward or away from the flames.

With a monumental force of will, she turns her attention back to the paper. It’s supposed to be three thousand words long, due in a week, and she’s just barely started. The words swim before her on the screen, stark black and utterly meaningless. Cassandra groans and buries her head in her hands. 

Then she hears a quiet laugh and looks up in time to see Alyss throw her head back. The fluorescent light glints off her glasses, framing her eyes like streaks of quicksilver. Cass swallows at the sheer openness of her expression and knows that she is seeing the real Alyss, not the quiet reserved one that she likes to present to the world. 

She could lose herself in the curve of Alyss’s neck, the laugh lines crinkling around her eyes, the dark hair falling behind her in waves. Cass’s skin still holds the memory of what it feels like to wind her fingers through it. 

In that same moment, she knows that she can never step away from Alyss. Not truly, not ever. Cassandra sees again in her head the way Alyss looked up when the barista called her order. She  _ remembers.  _

Sure, it could’ve been a coincidence, but Cass is willing to take that bet. In a way, she’s already beaten the odds. Because out of millions of people in thousands of cafés across hundreds of cities, she managed to run into Alyss again, and maybe this is the universe giving her a second chance. 

There’s hardly a question as to what to do next. Alyss remembers Cass’s old go-to order, and Cassandra still knows hers. 

She stumbles to her feet, almost knocking into an older man on the way to the counter. “A double-shot espresso with caramel sauce, please,” she says to the barista, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she waits for the coffee. The impatience in her crescendoes until it becomes nearly unbearable. Alyss is so close to her— _ Alyss fucking Mainwaring _ . She lifts one hand and notes that the tips of her fingers are trembling.  _ Goddammit _ . When was the last time Cassandra was this nervous about giving someone her number? 

She nearly spills the espresso over herself when the barista hands it to her. Swearing under her breath, Cass drops another dollar into the tip jar and thanks the girl profusely. “One more thing,” she says, trying to get her nerves under control. “Do you have a marker or pen of some kind?”

“I think so.” The barista searches her many apron pockets. “Here.” She fishes one out and hands it to Cassandra.

Her hands are shaky as she writes her number on the lid, so that the last 1 almost becomes an L, but it’s fine. The fact that her writing is legible at all right now is a miracle. “Thank you so much,” she says, and makes her way over to Alyss.

She has a split second to choose between two approaches—the Cassandra she is now, or the Cassandra she was when they dated?—but then Alyss looks up, and Cass suddenly feels like a little girl again. An eleven-year-old, to be precise, looking at her best friend and wondering if what she was thinking was no longer entirely  _ friend  _ territory.

“Hey,” she says before Alyss even opens her mouth. Her heartbeat is thundering so loud she can barely hear herself. “I, uh, got you this.” Cass sets the cup on the table a little too hard, so that some of the espresso sloshes out onto the lid. “And… my number, so text me?”

Alyss stares at her like she’s seen a ghost, and Cassandra has never been gladder that her skin is too dark to flush red. “Or, I mean, don’t text me?” Her voice rises awkwardly in pitch, and she coughs, trying to clear her throat. “Either way works—uh, don’t feel obligated, you know, just because I bought you a drink.” 

She hesitates for another split second and then turns away, making her escape and leaving both Alyss and Will gaping after her. It’s a struggle to not speed-walk straight out the door. 

“Oh my god,” Cass mutters aloud as soon as she’s back out in the snow. “Oh my  _ god,  _ you useless gay idiot.” She pulls her scarf angrily around her face again. 

Of course Alyss is the only person on earth she can’t even flirt with. Cassandra spent all of high school hooking up with people to piss off her dad—she has finding hot one-night stands down to a  _ science _ —but she can’t even look her childhood best friend in the eyes without having a meltdown.

Alyss is never going to text her back, and Cassandra’s going to spend her whole life pining, and it’s going to be fucking  _ awful _ –

Her phone chimes.

Cass’s heart jumps so high in her chest it hurts. She pulls it out so fast she nearly fumbles it onto the pavement, ripping off her gloves and checking her notifications with painful eagerness. 

Aly still uses the same number she had in middle school. The contact picture is of twelve-year-old Alyss, gangly and stick-thin, smile stretched wide with braces. Cassandra swallows back the memory before she actually checks the text:

_ the way u flirt is shameful. _

The text bubble comes up again, and this time it’s a picture that Cass stares at for a solid ten seconds before her brain reboots again. Will must’ve just taken it: Alyss is smiling at the camera, her brown eyes dancing, face resting on one hand, strands of black hair escaping her elegant braid. 

Fingers shaking, Cass sets it as her new contact photo. She texts back, 

_ thanks :) get coffee again sometime?  _

She hits send and puts her phone back in her pocket.

The emotion that rises in her chest feels strangely like hope. 


	2. Funnel Cakes and Freedom

“I still can’t believe this is a thing,” Alyss says, gazing across the parking lot. Long shadows slant under the cars and through the grass, and the world is striped in gold and black. Up above, the sky is beginning to purple into twilight. She can see the big Ferris wheel lit up against it like a chandelier, dazzlingly bright. 

“You’ve never been to a fair before.” Cass pitches the words as a statement, not a question. Where the sunlight falls on her face, her skin is the color of burning umber, her irises pools of honey, and Alyss’s stomach flips over.

“No,” she says, exercising all of her considerable willpower to keep her voice steady. “I have not.”

“Well, in that case—” Cassandra stands up on her toes and brushes her lips to Alyss’s ear, the touch feather-light and all too fleeting—“I’d love to show you around.”

Alyss feels her heart rate speed up, but it’s hard to stop a smile from spreading across her face. “That’d be great.” 

Once, there had been a time in her life where she’d held herself away from Cassandra, scared of being a girl in love with another girl. Of what it meant for her future and her life. It had broken both their hearts. 

Six years later, Alyss is done holding back.

“Epic.” Cass beams and slips her hand into Alyss’s, their fingers interlocking, as they approach the ticket booth. She slides a twenty to the woman at the cash register—“Two, please.  _ Unlimited _ rides,”—and winks at Alyss, who shakes her head at the double entendre. 

“You’re awful.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cass says innocently. She holds out her wristband. “Would you please?”

“What—oh—yeah.” Alyss fastens the band around Cass’s arm, fingers sliding on bare skin.

“I am too fucking gay to function,” Cassandra announces, her eyes fixed on Alyss’s hands. “Come, darling, let’s away.”

“You’re a Shakespeare gay,” Alyss notes.

“ _ You’re _ the Shakespeare gay. I prefer to think of my energy as  _ freewheeling pansexual _ ,” Cassandra says, flipping her braids over one shoulder. “Where do you want to go first?” 

Alyss looks around at the rides. They all seem to be spinning at dangerously high speeds, screams from their riders echoing up into the sky. Her stomach starts churning at the sight alone. “Rides first, then food. I’d really hate to throw up on you.”

“Could be a weird sort of kink,” Cass says, but she leads Alyss through the crowd. Her fingers are warm on Alyss’s arm, a welcome contrast to the dusk breeze that’s picked up. Tonight, they’re like every other young couple, giddy with each other’s company and the sweetness of summer evenings. The anonymity—the way they can just  _ be _ —is soothing. 

“Here we are,” Cassandra announces. “Defying Gravity.” 

Alyss stares upward at the giant circular contraption. Her nerves clench into a tiny ball in the pit of her stomach as it rotates faster and faster, tilting on its base until its riders are parallel to the ground. “Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god.”

“It’ll be fun,” Cassandra says, and a slow smile spreads across her face. “But if you really don’t want to, there are other ways I can make you scream like that.”

“That was less of a pick-up line and more of a creepy serial killer line,” says Alyss, if only to distract from the pit in her stomach. 

“You may be right, but it was still a good one.” Cassandra pulls her into the line. “You’ll be okay, Aly. If you throw up, I’ll buy you funnel cake.”

The riders get off, stumbling into one another. One runs for the nearest trash can, but Cass is unfazed. Her braids swing behind her as she practically skips onto the contraption. “Nothing to worry about,” she calls. 

Alyss steels herself and follows. The ride creaks under her feet in a way that is not reassuring. She glances apprehensively at the supports, which seem far too flimsy for her to literally trust her life with. 

“Okay. Come here,” Cass says. She shows Alyss where to put her hands and how to buckle herself in. Her fingers work expertly on the safety straps, brushing against Alyss’s bare stomach in a way that makes her heart jump. “Just like that.” She lingers a moment, sliding her thumb across Alyss’s cheekbone, brown eyes teasing.

“You are unfair,” Alyss says softly.

Cassandra’s voice suddenly becomes husky. “And you are beautiful.” 

She is a dark outline silhouetted against the sunset, golden rays framing her head in a halo, highlights skipping through her braided hair. When their lips meet, Alyss closes her eyes and tastes cherries on her tongue.

Cass pulls away as the ride fires up, buckling herself in as well. “Alright, here we go.” She turns her head and catches Alyss’s gaze as they begin to rotate. “Try not to throw up.”

Alyss fixes her eyes on the sky as everything spins around her, watching the clouds pinwheel overhead like streams of smoke, faster and faster and faster until she feels weightless. Until she feels as if she can conquer the world entire.

“That was amazing.” Alyss jumps off the ride. Her knees buckle slightly as her feet come into contact with solid ground, but she feels light as air, like one jump could launch her over the moon. 

“Was it—oh, I mean, good. Great. I’m glad,” Cass says, nearly staggering into a woman standing nearby. 

“Do you get motion sickness?” Alyss asks innocently.

“Of course not,” she says, still unsteady on her feet. “I’m only dizzy because you—” she claps a hand on Alyss’s shoulder—“are so fucking pretty.”

“You’re awful.”

“My teasing turns you on, and we both know it.”

Something about the coming night makes her feel bold. It’s something in the smell of fried fair food and blaring rock music. In Cassandra’s slightly parted lips and dimpled smile. Something in the feeling that seized her on Defying Gravity, when she was atop the whole earth. Alyss steps closer and breathes, “How could it not?”

“Oh my god,” says Cass. “I’m  _ rubbing off on you _ . This is the proudest moment of my life.” She stands up on her tiptoes and lays her head on Alyss’s shoulder, and Alyss feels herself flush pink. 

“ _ There _ it is,” her girlfriend says. “You are so adorable and goddamned sexy at the same time.”

“Call it a brand,” Alyss says, leaning in until Cassandra’s braids tickle her face and all she can smell is cinnamon perfume. She hears Cassandra’s sudden intake of breath, and then her girlfriend raises her chin and presses a kiss to the corner of Alyss’s mouth. 

People are watching them, she knows, wondering if they are best friends or lovers. It used to bother her, but tonight, it seems trivial. She’s starting to see why Cass flirts so brazenly. There is power in existing as a woman who loves other women; there is power in living that truth no matter what the world thinks.

When they pull apart, Alyss feels giddy, her blood electrified. Her head is spinning from the utter  _ fierceness _ of what she’s feeling, but her heart is as steady as the point where lightning strikes ground. 

“Let’s go find that next ride,” she says, and Cassandra groans but follows readily enough.

They thread their way through the fair, past stalls where giant stuffed prizes are hung up, faces are painted, and lemonade is sold. Alyss locates the source of the loudest screaming and heads straight for it: a giant swinging boat that arcs up towards the sky like a massive two-ton pendulum.

“Oh, horrors,” Cassandra mutters.

“What happened to  _ it’ll be fun, Alyss, try not to throw up _ ?” Alyss ties her hair back as they sit down in the last row of seats. 

Cass fiddles experimentally with the flimsy-looking safety bar. “That was before I realized how much of a wuss my stomach is.” 

“You’re scared,” Alyss says.

“What? No! I am unflappable. Unshakable. Nothing fazes me.”

“Of course, love.” Alyss reaches over and pats her on the shoulder. “Then you won’t mind going hands free.”

“God-fucking-damn you,” Cass groans. “Okay, fine. I’m terrified, and I am only admitting this because I want to hold onto you.”

“I told you so,” she says in a sing-song voice, but she scoots closer anyway. Cassandra grabs her arm and clutches it like a life preserver, and Alyss smiles down at her, holding onto the safety bar with her free hand. “We’ll be just fine.” 

Cass glances up, brown eyes wide under thick eyelashes, and Alyss’s heart skips a beat as she thinks,  _ I would never let anything happen to you _ . 

The ride begins to rock back and forth. It feels pleasantly like a large swing, the kind she used to launch herself off of in elementary school and end up with scraped knees and bruised hands. 

Then it jolts higher, and Cass yelps, grabbing tighter to Alyss until she’s nearly the little spoon. She can feel Cassandra’s face against her neck, breath ghosting across her skin. Even that tiny movement makes her heart skip a beat. 

She’s thought about being held like more than she cares to admit. Alyss wants Cassandra to fall asleep holding her every night. She wants to wake up in the morning tangled up together, wrapped around one another tighter than the Gordian knot. 

The boat swings higher still, and gravity starts to pull Alyss away from the seat. Cassandra screams aloud, her face in Alyss’s shoulder, “Fuck—fuck, Aly–” Her grip is almost bruising against Alyss’s skin. 

Alyss winds one of her hands into her girlfriend’s hair, holding them together like ships lashed side by side as the ride goes into free fall. “Shh,” she says quietly. “Cassie. Cassandra. You’re going to be okay. I’m here. I’m here for you.” Her stomach swoops as the ground rushes closer, and then they’re soaring again, back up towards the night sky. 

Cassandra breathes, “Alyss,” and every nerve in her is suddenly set alight when she hears her name on Cassandra’s lips. Is there anything more tender, she wonders, than the sound of soft vowels in her girlfriend’s mouth, the tiny exhale at the end of the word? The way she says Alyss’s name like a prayer to God and his angels in the heavens, like holy scripture lancing through the silence of a hundred churches?

“Cassandra,” she says again, savoring every syllable, letting them roll slowly off her tongue. “Everything will be okay. I promise.”

Her girlfriend only relaxes when the ride begins to slow down, the boat moving in a back-and-forth motion that reminds Alyss of waves rippling against a shoreline. Her own heart is still pounding in her chest, but she doesn’t know if it’s from the adrenaline rush or Cass still wrapped around her or both. 

She feels a faint sense of regret as the boat comes to a full stop and people begin to disembark. Next to her, Cassandra stirs and groans, “Oh, thank fuck.” 

Her voice is still muffled against Alyss’s shoulder, and it makes her laugh. “Had enough?”

“I mean, I’d ride this a hundred more times if you kept holding me like that.” Cassandra reluctantly disentangles herself from Alyss.

“I have a feeling you’d rather ride something else,” Alyss says, and the boldness takes even her by surprise. But the atmosphere of tonight—the bright lights and booming music and Cassandra curled up against her side—it lowers her inhibitions, sends adrenaline pulsing through her blood. And… the way her girlfriend splutters is incredibly cute. 

She takes Cass’s hand and helps her to her feet. Cassandra gives a little sigh of pleasure as her feet touch solid ground, and Alyss smiles and slides an arm around her waist. “Do you want to get food now?” she asks.

“Definitely. No more rides,” Cass groans. “My stomach is about to mutiny.”

“Alright.” They walk in comfortable silence to the nearest vendor, where they buys a funnel cake and two lemonades. Alyss sits down at a nearby picnic table, and Cassandra looks at her with puppy-dog eyes.

“What—oh,” she says, scooting away from the table. “Fine, you big baby.” Cass sits down on her lap, and Alyss smiles and wraps her arms around her girlfriend’s stomach. 

“Have I ever told you that you’re the hottest person on the planet?” Cassandra asks, moving her head so that her mouth brushes Alyss’s bare shoulder.

“I see how it is,” Alyss says instead of responding. “The moment we’re not on a ride, you’re back to charming everything with a heartbeat.”

“Only you, love.” Cassandra turns herself so they’re facing one another, her legs straddling Alyss’s lap. “Only you.”

Her cinnamon perfume fills the air between them, and Alyss watches the way the dimming sky paints Cassandra in shades of purple shadow, the way the neon lights of the fair slide across her cheekbones like shooting stars, and wonders if this is what the world felt when Aphrodite rose from the sea.

She leans in. Alyss may not be as bold as Cass, may never be a charmer with a mouth like quicksilver and a soul full of fire, but she knows what her girlfriend likes. “The way you flirt,” she whispers, enjoying the way Cassandra’s pupils go wide, “is shameful.” The words are full of shared meaning, a memory of their new beginning together, of a coffee shop in winter and an espresso with caramel sauce. The start of a life Alyss never dreamed she would be able to live. 

Her breath hitches, and they’re so close that Alyss feels their hearts beating against one another, foreheads almost touching. She can see the tiny freckle below Cass’s left eye, a Polaris in the galaxy of her. 

Cassandra reaches forward and brushes a loose strand of hair behind Alyss’s ear, fingers trailing down over her neck, and it feels like they leave lines of fire in their wake. “I’m hardly to blame,” she says softly. “If only you understood the things you do to me.” 

When they kiss, Alyss thinks that even the golden apples of the Hesperides could not have tasted as divine.

They share the funnel cake between them, pulling it apart with their fingers. There’s enough oil in it to stop a man’s heart, but Alyss is beyond the point of caring, relishing the way the fried batter crackles between her teeth and the sugar explodes on her tongue.

“Is there any greater pleasure in life,” Cassandra asks, “than greasy fair food?” She’s slowly sucking the powdered sugar off her fingers, making eye contact with Alyss the entire time. Alyss smiles and smudges a streak of it across Cass’s nose.

“I don’t think so,” she says, taking the last chunk of funnel cake and tearing it down the middle, fingers slick with grease. “Here, let’s finish this.”

They do, and afterwards, Alyss swings Cassandra onto her back. They’re both laughing, sharing sloppy kisses that taste like powdered sugar and lemonade, like funnel cakes, fest, and freedom. A light rain begins to fall, mist settling into Cass’s hair like gold dust. “Ferris wheel,” Cassandra says into Alyss’s ear, and Alyss sets off for the big wheel rotating at the center of the fair, lighting up the whole night like a sparkler.

“After you,” she says, sliding Cass off her back and into a seat. It rocks as they settle in, leaning into one another. Slowly, they begin their ascent into the sky.

Alyss sits back and watches the crowd below. Something in her heart expands at the sight of all this—this  _ vitality _ that flows through them, blazing to fearsome life in the groups of people laughing, parents swinging little kids onto their shoulders, young couples walking hand in hand.

There is so much joy in this life, something in her head whispers. You just have to be willing to seek it out. __

She turns and looks at Cassandra, really  _ looks _ , and sees her childhood best friend, her middle school ex turned college girlfriend. Her face is streaked with rain, mascara beginning to run, braids glinting with a thousand points of light like a crown of rain. The lines of her nose and jaw are thrown into sharp relief by the neon lights. Cass looks down and whoops, and Alyss senses that every inch of her soul is bared to the world, ready to give it everything and have fun doing it.

Alyss thinks back to who she was as a girl. To strict Chinese parents who wanted the best for her, but only succeeded in trapping her behind the ideal of how a perfect daughter should be. To reading about Stonewall for the first time and feeling tears sting the backs of her eyes. To four years of high school spent wondering if she could ever live her truth in this world. To wanting the freedom to love, but being too scared to demand it at the same time. 

She wants to reach into the past and hold that girl. To tell her that everything will be okay, that six years later it will be a brilliant summer evening and she will share food and kisses with Cassandra. And that her heart will finally, finally, be at peace.


End file.
